"I Hated How Their Eyes Felt On My Bare Existence, So I Built Up A Circus And Called It Myself To Give

"I hated how their eyes felt on my bare existence, so I built up a circus and called it myself to give them a show other than who I am when I've taken off all my makeup and jewelry, put down my phone, and climbed into bed. I've worked so hard to play the part I've forgotten who I was when I first looked to others to see my reflection." -Nov 17 2023 Aik.

"There is so much pressure between my shoulder blades I fear I may be carrying the world. Perhaps that is why with each stumble I feel like I may have just lost it all. I almost went to a masseuse just to see if they could work out the knot, but for another's hands to press against my entirety is an intimacy too grand for me. I pretend yoga takes the tension away, at least that I can do on my own."

"I crawl into bed only for once I am not alone. There is someone between these sheets with me- bare and beautiful but entirely unknown. This bed had only ever known myself and my friends, a pet or two, and a soft sort of sleepover. I crawl into it with someone else on the other side and it is entirely foreign to me, but at the very least it is still my bed; I don't know if I could see someones history so brazenly and still embrace all that I did not know. I wonder what the college experience meant to everyone else, and if they too have felt soiled by this thing we had too long idolized. I hope they have not, and it's all they've ever dreamed. Sleep has never been so cold."

-Pillow Talk Aik.

"I feel sometimes as if I wasn't made for this world. Like my brain was coded for a different place yet crammed into this foreign flesh and blood. I feel sometimes like I am not supposed to be here; then I remember how little that tends to matter."

Hi I love your writing! Can I request one where Tokoyami )or anyone you'd like really,) finds a collection of old-ish diaries and letters while cleaning? The person's handwriting is very distinct and pretty (Think 1700's love letter find) but they never mention their name. As they read more of it they find newer entries where Aizawa is mentioned so they ask him about it only to find out the person who wrote them died almost 100 years ago and 'haunts' the school. (Sorry for long request)

I’m in the terrible habit of posting the fic but not answering the request ughh-- I hope you enjoyed it! It’s a one-shot as of now, but since the ending was pretty open I’d be willing to right a part two if I ever think of how it should go! Thank you for this request, it was so nice to write and I love the idea! I just hope I did it justice

Don’t Let Me Fall (Too Far From Grace)

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cw: Major religious trauma for Y/n, enjoy. Swears, violence, cults, misogyny, self-mutilation, public abuse, parental abuse, attempted murder, self-defense, poison

A/n: a short glimpse into the makings of dadzawa; with an angsty Y/n religious quirk struggle

 summary: There’s a part of Shouta that hates his job. While he can handle the annoying brats, unstable quirks, rude comments, life-threatening danger, and annoying hours, there’s just some things not even Shouta could tolerate.  There’s a girl in his class. She’s nice but a little too quiet for it to sit right. He’s a teacher, been one for years and was a hero for much longer-- He knows the signs when he sees them.

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“Brother Haruka,”

“Father Y/l/n; it’s always a pleasure.” Clasped forearms greeted one another, eye to eye they examined the other. Smiles filled each room and yet the tension was so thick, thick, thick; she looked to her mother but found a void in her place.

It crept into Y/n’s throat like sludge, chocking on the breath that filled her lungs as she swallowed for the fiftieth time that service. The eyes that followed, the eyes that glared, the eyes that widened, all at her, at her, at her. She kept her head down. 

The family of five- a strong pastor father, the beautiful but sickly motherly wife, the silent eldest son, and the perfect youngest daughter. And Y/n, lost somewhere in the mess of facades they seemed to exchange so rapidly.

Or maybe lost was the wrong word, seeing as everyone could find her, the daughter of the pastor, the picture-perfect symbol of what they stood for, quirkless, pure, devine; up until four months ago. 

Four months ago, when her world changed.

1-A kept a keen eye on Y/n, her silent passing and downcast eyes demanded attention from the rowdy bunch, but it was her appearance that caught them off guard the most. 

Denki had asked about them once, resulting in a panic attack and mute classmate which lasted a week before she would speak in a quiet, fragile tone. It got worse before it got better. 

She could feel them-- the eyes, eyes, eyes. Following her, ridiculing her, judging her. It broke Shouta’s heart.

“She’s just a girl, our little girl,”

“It’s a heathen!”

“She’s done nothing wrong,”

“It’s got horns god bless me!”

“Dear, she’s still our Y/n, our little angel,”

Her knees were pulled to her chest, listening silently at the top of the stairs to the hushed and not so hidden argument of her parents. Y/n’s father damning her, and her mom, desperately trying to cling to her life.

“That thing’s no angel-- it’s the devil.”

“What are you doing out here, kid?”  Aizawa cringed inside watching the girls entire body stiffen. 

“I’m sorry sir, I'll go back inside.” Her wide eyes became fixed on the floor, shoulders slouched but still full of twisted anxiety.

“You’re not in trouble, Y/l/n.”

“I’m not?” Her face stayed down, but she was finally looking directly at him, so Shouta counted this as a win.

“No,” he walked to the railing she had previously been leaning against, “There’s no rules against being on the rooftop. I just thought you might get cold.” He gestured to her head when he said that, causing her to flinch softly.

“I see.”

She still scurried away, leaving the concerned teacher by himself on the rooftop.

The horns that began to grew from the front corners of Y/n’s skull had been easily hideable when she noticed the growths. She teased her hair, wore headbands, dawned a head-scarf for modesty, but then her sister accidentally pulled it off her head during dinner, exposing them to the entire family. 

That was the first night Emi had crawled into Y/n’s bed and cried since she was six and saw her big sister be punished for the first time. Punished. 

The Shinja were many things, devote, united, pure, and forgiving. They believed in one thing above all else, God’s eternal and limitless magnanimity. For a sin their must be penitence, must be a beg for forgiveness. 

For Y/n, this meant one thing.

It started small, Y/n found a scarf waiting for her on the railing when she made her way to the roof that night. It was nice, it was warm; something Y/n struggled with being. 

Then Aizawa would stop by when it turned past midnight, sending the quiet girl back inside to stop her from catching a cold. And now, they coexist.

“Was--” she paused before shaking her head, looking back out to the grounds behind UA. 

“What is it, kid?” He paused for an answer before breaking, “You can ask questions you know.”

“Was Iida right?”

Silence. 

“That’s really up to you. At the end of the day, you decide what kind of hero you want to be. Your hero uniform is a big part of that identity, so if you think that’s a necessary part of that then you should keep it.”

Y/n played with the delicate silver cross dangling from the chain across her neck before looking up to the sky, just like Aizawa saw her do earlier during class.

“Kay.”

The conversation from the classroom had been a tense one to say the least. Iida, in his self-correct but oblivious way, asked the quiet girl, “Don’t you think it may be offensive to wear a cross as part of your hero costume? Won’t people feel imposed upon? Besides, very few people are catholic after the development of the quirk gene. Would it not, perhaps, be a better choice to remove that aspect from your uniform?”

Y/n had, at the time, only responded briefly, “Why would people be offended by a necklace?”  Everyone looked up to the mounds above her head. No one said a thing. 

A few days later he finally broke, “It was surprising I suppose. Not like I care, but people aren’t really religious anymore.”

She tried not to think about it, and she continued to try not to think about it long after she had left the rooftop. People aren't really religious anymore. Y/n tried to think through what makes a religion a religion, where things started to turn after quirks were made. Some religions embraced them as a new moral test of god, others claimed it disproved God entirely. Some drew strange connections claiming the bible predicted it all along.

Y/n is sitting in her room when it happens. She's absent-mindedly rolling her silver cross necklace between her fingers while ignoring her homework when she things- it would be so much easier if I wasn't religious anymore.

It felt dirty, like a dangerous secret. What does it mean to be religious on a personal level? She isn't allowed on the campound, let alone in the church. She doesn't read the scripture any more, nor does she pray genuinely. After a few cafeteria visits with Kaminari keeping her company she's even began to speak the lord's name in vain. Yet Y/n is so sure, in her heart and center of everything, that there is spirit within her.

She thinks about the religion she learned about the first time someone called her hometown a cult. She googled what the word meant and learned about a different group, a group that drank poison and passed away as a whole. Y/n can't think of another species that would do that and thinks they must have spirit.

The eyes from the pews followed her as she walked, head bowed as she pushed forward, past every person she ever knew, towards her father. Her father who forgave her, who actually forgave her. Forgave her monstrous appearance, was willing to look past the disgusting curse she had. She loves her father. So she kneeled willingly before the cross and bowed her head fifty times before turning on her knees towards her father.

A hush fell over the chapel.

She accepted the holy blade from her father.

She lifted it above her head. 

The scream echoed through the room, bounding back towards her from the walls it landed on. The blade moved back and forth, until her world became deathly still.

Her father placed his hand upon her head, gently ending the assault. “You’re doing well, my child.” Each following day was ended with her in the privacy of her family's bunker, penance following shortly after. 

She was repenting for her sins, but there was a silent acknowledgment among everyone. For Y/n, who never stopped sinning, there must be constant repentance. Nothing short of unyielding devotion. The days blurred together, so did her memory. 

Y/n looked up at the board, eyes coated with gloss and filled to the brim with pain, pain, misery. ‘Quirkless Study.’ A lesson on discrimination, of differences, of acceptance. Forty seven minutes of something she’d kill to get out of-- something she’d die to get out of. 

The class wasn’t today, thank God, but it was soon. Soon, being tomorrow. Tomorrow, class, quirkless, pure thing, stuck, school, mistake, thing, thing, thing. Words echoed through her head, too fast for Y/n too pick them apart, too fast to be remembered, just fast enough to hurt. 

Y/n stayed on the roof from after school to midnight, far too long in the cold, too long without eating, too long for no body to have noticed.

“Fucking hell, kid. Why are you out here?”

Aizawa-Sensai dropped in and wrapped his scarf around Y/n’s shaking body, noting both the absent look in her eyes and the festering fear lying just beneath the surface.

"Y/l/n? Are you with me?"

What a silly question. Of course she was with him, they're on the same rooftop– he's got a hand lying gently on her shoulder.

"Because you seem a little far away."

And didn't that make so much sense. Because they were right next to each other, much like how her dad was right in front of her, yet both of them were miles away from where Y/n was.

"I'm sorry, sensei."

He froze, "it's Allright, Y/n, it's going to be okay."

The need to gasp for air clued her in that she'd started to cry. The warm tears burned her frigid skin.

"Hey, hey," Aizawas voice rumbled deep in his chest, "careful there." He tapped her knuckles which had turned white with the force she had been digging her nails into her arms.

"I don't want to go to school tommorow."

She winced but he didn't answer her. Saying the words out loud felt different than the mantra from her head. It all seems a little silly now. Y/n wanted to be a hero after all, and here she was; scared to go to class.

The man leveled his eyes with her and sighed, raising a hand between her two curled horns and patting the top of her head.

"It's not silly, Y/n."

She wrinkled her nose at him, unsure of his meaning and was floored when he began to laugh. "You mutter, but that's okay. You don't have to be a hero yet; not today and not tomorrow. For now you are still a child, and you deserve to feel the safety that should come with that."

It felt odd, to feel so cold you want to shiver and yet melt from the inside out. Maybe, maybe that was true. Maybe she will be a hero in a few years, maybe less. But tonight she wasn't, tonight she could feel as little as that sentence made her. Small and safe, so fucking fragile but perfectly protected.

It made her want to cry.

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and there we have it. I know it's a little random but I feel like sometimes we carry the weight of lifetimes with us and forget how young we are in the grand scheme of things. It's okay. We'll figure this out together.